It's a wintry morning in New Jersey and Pat LaFrieda Jr is explaining how much he likes meat. "Butchering is not just a job," he barks. "It's my life. There's nothing I don't know about meat. It's beautiful. It's everything".

Pat LaFrieda Jr calls himself the Magician Of Meat and wears a baseball cap that says EAT MY MEAT ™. He's 41. Together with gum-chewing cousin Mark and astonishingly foul-mouthed father Pat Sr they run Pat LaFrieda & Son Meat Purveyors – one of the most successful family-run meat companies in America and now, magically, the subject of Meat Men (Monday, 7.30pm, Dave), the latest series to recognise the appeal of thickset Americans bellowing obscenities in unpleasant work environments (see also: Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men etc).

Meat Men is approximately 77% meat and 23% men. The few scenes that don't contain meat contain men talking about meat, or men shouting about meat, or, in one particularly confusing segment, men shouting about meat over a crude diagram of a cow. It's not always easy to tell where the meat ends and the men begin. In an effort to encourage this line of thinking, Meat Men intersperses the narrative with fast-paced montages depicting a seemingly random selection of "action" shots from inside the LaFrieda factory: cleavers shattering ribcages; fists pummelling hides; Pat Snr calling expressionless workers "fuckin' girl scouts" next to some brisket; that sort of thing.

After a while it all becomes a fleshy blur; hand fusing with hoof, bearded labourer blending with pig carcass, lunatic editing smushing up reality until you expect Pat Sr to drop to all fours and demand to be milked. There's probably something profound in here about symbiosis and the nature of consumerism and waste. But then you watch Pat Jr enthusing over the factory's new talking rooster sign and realise it's probably best just to concentrate on the meat.

If this six-part series were a burger, the meat/men "patty" would be served in a low-budget bun with a modest blob of scripted reality mayonnaise. No lettuce, though. Hell no. "What's this?" barks office manager Mark, prodding uncomprehendingly at a wilting flap of salad leaf draped over a burger in client Mike White's restaurant kitchen. "That is lettuce. It is a vegetable" explains Mike, slowly. Mark blinks. Then he shakes his head. "The burger," he says, decisively. "It's godda be, like, fuckin' boom."

Mark's brain refuses to acknowledge the existence of any foodstuff that has not at some point owned its own ankles. That's how pro-meat Mark is. But Mark's bellowing carnivorousness pales in comparison to that of Pat Jnr. At one point, the butcher tells us the only thing that helps him solve personal dilemmas is "cuttin' meat". At another point, he gets bored of cuttin' meat and starts eatin' it instead. "I feel comfortable with eatin' anythin' raw," he shouts between mouthfuls of uncooked mince. Presumably, the scene in which he shouts about feeling comfortable with the crippling abdominal cramps and chronic diarrhoea of E.coli was deemed too unsettlin' for public consumption.

The confusion continues. There are squealing guitars, decontextualised reaction shots, scenes in which Pat tells us that this is his best burger recipe ever, a shot of Mike White angrily rejecting Pat's best burger recipe ever, explosion noises, and a voice shouting "COMING UP ON MEAT MEN" over footage of pork knuckles. Meanwhile, everybody talks using. A mixture of. Hammerblow exposition and fist-pumping aphorisms. That due to the machine-gun editing. Is rendered essentially. Meaningless. "Ain't nobody can beat my meat," guffaws Mark at a befuddling rooftop barbecue.

Here is 20 minutes of prime reality steak, trimmed of context and logic: a bewildering, lettuce-less and strangely wonderful ode to the worlds of deafening machismo and not being a vegetarian. Meat Men: 77% meat; 23% men; 100%, like, fuckin' boom.